There is a deepening and growing strain in the spiritual world, I see it all the time, people of faith who believe we are living in the end of times. It’s easy to understand that belief if  you watch the news too often.

The idea of end times used to be seen as a fringe ideology, it is slipping into the mainstream as humanity sometimes turns to its darkest side and empathy fades.

The signs of the end that Jesus and other spiritual leaders talked about are already here: wars and revolutions, conflicts between nations, the suffering of the earth, plagues, fire, savage storms, disease,  famines, genocides, hate and revolutions.

The ancients said that when these things begin to take place, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:2)

Other spiritualists, the ones that inspire me,  like Thomas Merton or Henry Nouwen, see something different, something more hopeful.

“Certain events, current events, historical events, critical incidents and life circumstances – serve as sign posts pointing to the will of God and the new creation for those with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Nouwen wrote in his book “Discernment.”

Nouwen also believes we are nearing the end of times, but he doesn’t see this as Armageddon, as the end of life, but as the beginning of a new way of life.  He takes faith to mean that we are all living under God’s promise that “all things are being made new.”

I confess to liking that idea, it is much more hopeful, it stirs my soul a bit and makes sense in many ways. It recognizes my own insignificance and humility.

As someone with wobbly ideas about God and faith, I feel sometimes that I am on the sidelines of this central discussion, I am not thinking much of Armageddon, but the end of times, if it is coming,  will certainly affect me and the people and things that I love as much as it will roll over the true believers.

I have always been drawn to Thomas Merton’s identification of the “signs of the times” as kairos –  a word with many meanings. In classical rhetoric, kairos refers to the opportune time, the right or appropriate time to say or do the right thing. A time that has come.

Merton’s definition of time was much broader and more mystical than ours. He saw kairos as a quality of time that is eternal, when time is full of meaning and events point to divine purpose.

“The Bible,” he wrote,”is concerned with time’s fulness, the time for an event to happen, the time for an emotion to be felt, the time for a harvest or for the celebration of a harvest.”

Clock time (chronos) is different, it is the time humans and politicians and pundits follow, it is divided into minutes, hours, days or weeks.

God’s time – kairos – has to do with opportunity and fullness of meaning, moments that are ripe for their intended purpose. That is the time I seek to live in during my life.

When we see time in light of our spiritual faith, we have a different perspective on the “events” of the day or year.

What happens on the news is not just a series of happy or unhappy events but part of the shaping hands of the Gods, who are molding our lives and our world in ways we are too small and confined, even narrow-minded,  to see.

This time is timeless.

Merton would call it “God’s Time” and this applies to all time, the beginning and end of time, the deeper meaning of all history.

I think about things like this on my little farm, ever since I started reading St. Augustine’s City Of God and the Kabbalah to my dog Rose up on the hill above the first Bedlam Farm.

I always thought Rose might be listening, even though she never took  her eyes off of the sheep.

I remember reading this quote to Rose: “Men love the truth when it bathes them in the light: they hate it when it proves them wrong.”

I admit it seems to me sometimes that modern history suggests human beings and their co-called leaders will eventually find a way to destroy life on Mother Earth, either through war and devastating new weaponry, or through moral and spiritual decay, or from greed or hatred or ignorance, or the growing tide of natural disasters.

I remember reading God’s warning to his people in the Kabbalah that if they didn’t protect Mother Earth, he would abandon them to their own fate, leave them incomplete and destructive, and walk away from the earth, and from them.

It is difficult sometimes for me to not to believe that prophesy is here as it unfolds in front of me.

I am not a brooder or a pessimist about this, life is much bigger than me,  and I do not expect to see the end of times in my life time.

If I  look at the track we are on, it’s hard to see a happy ending for people – Mother Earth is taking things into her own powerful hands –  unless women really do take over the political world and alter the way we live.

The idea of end times seems small to me, narrow, it comes only if I see the world in terms of chronos, and measure it in terms of minutes and hours.

If if I see the world in terms of kairos, it is very different.

Merton and Nouwen and St. Augustine and the mystical authors of the Kabbalah lead me to a hopeful view of the future.

This view of time asks us to be patient and tolerant. If we are patient, writes Nouwen, we can look at all of the events of each day – expected and unexpected  – as holding promise for us.

Patience is the attitude that says we cannot force life to fit our beliefs and wishes, we have to accept it, we have to stand back and let it grow and evolve in its own way and time. That is the very meaning of koiros.

Patience and faith lets us see the people we meet, the events of the day, the unfolding history of our times as all part of that slow process of development and final liberation. For people of faith, the news is simply the events that reveal divine purpose, most of us are too narrow and contained in our lives to see it.

I have to confess I find this idea liberating. Some days, when I read what people do to one another, I think this is just too big for me to grasp. I can’t help but feel hopeful, it’s in my DNA.

When I see time in a different way, the world seems much brighter to me.

I know I am too microscopic to see the future of the world, too shaped by my own failings and conceptions. What would I really know about that?

But I might be big enough to be patient, to do my own good when I can, and stand back and let the future reveal itself. It is just so much bigger than I am, and I do believe there is a larger meaning in all of this than I can see.

The good things in my life have been completely unexpected, most of the things I thought would happen did not. This reminds me to be humble about having the answers to the great questions of life. I can’t quite go with the God who is the God of life who makes everything new.

Perhaps one day. I’d love to get there.

For now, wisdom for me is not in knowing everything, but in knowing what I don’t know and can’t see. I am living a life I never imagined living. I can’t claim to know the future of the world.

I’m going with patience.